I just want to express how glad I am that this whole process and musicological ecosystem is still functioning and thriving in ways that are comforting and familiar to me.

This includes the concept of underground and difficult to obtain music, as well as the concept of obtaining it through specialist nets like slsk, sneakernets, private forums/trackers and straight up asking people, including the artists themselves.

Oh, hey, maybe I do have something useful to say:

Hey /u/rickpuremusic, one of the things that people do in your scenario is establish contact directly with the artists and/or labels themselves.

This works better for smaller labels than majors like Warp or something.

I've done this a number of times, even with totally blatant confessions like "Hey. I love your stuff, but I can't find it, or I can't afford it. So I downloaded it. And I'm probably going to play it out on my community radio station show or small club or underground party or something. Can I send you some money?"

And the responses for me have always been positive, like "yeah, go for it. I love that you like it enough to spend time to jump hurdles to find it and then reach out." and sometimes even "Have you checked out this? Here, let me send you something new."

Because one of the things I've discovered about rare underground IDM in general is that people are uncommonly friendly. And approachable.

And another thing I've discovered is that many of those artists also participate in stuff like slsk or private sites or trackers.

So, if you can't find a way to contact them directly online, you can try finding them on slsk in chatrooms or as users with shares.

Obviously you don't really just want to go barging around hunting heads and name dropping, but if you take the time to establish relationships, good things will flow.

And last: Underground music isn't meant to be safe. Sometimes you have to take risks and break rules to make art.

The spoken and unspoken code and cultural fabric of underground dance/electronic music has always been in favor of the pirate in many ways, be it the mixtape, the sample, the acetate cutting, the loop and knowing the real moral difference between stealing and repurposing,

Yeah, if you're getting paid to play, you should pay for your plays. If you fully intend to pay and buy physical or digital licenses, I can't think of any legit, good label that's going to go after you for a small public DJ performance spin, especially if you're actually beatmixing.

No, I'm glad you called me out on it because I remember I was trying to clarify what I was saying, and thinking "Oh shit, people are going to think this is racist bullshit about asians eating dogs and cats and shit."

Not what I was implying at all.

When I was in SF I watched about 6 different street pigeon poachings. And every time it was some little old Chinese grandmother looking type person with a plastic shopping bag. (As in actually Chinese-American. I might have super round eyes but I grew up around enough diverse Asian culture to usually be able to know, and I'm not bringing this up to be racist at all.)

And I really don't have any problem with this at all. Pigeon/squab/dove is tasty. And I get that Chinese culture has a huge thing about really fresh food. There's a billion frickin' pigeons in SF, and if someone wants to eat some of them whether it's to save some money or get a really fresh bird - that's fine in my book.

I'd be concerned about the fact that city pigeons eat garbage and drink out of roadside gutters, but that's still probably a better diet than battery cage raised chickens.

I'm only here because I like food and people of all kinds, and I like being able to cook good vegan food for my vegan friends.

Also, I fucking love tofu. And tempeh. And Seitan. I have no idea why more omnis aren't into tofu, especially those dorks that claim to love protein.

If I was forced to choose between bacon and tofu, tofu would be the easy choice. Bacon is always bacon, but tofu can be bacon, or BBQ, or sweet and sour, or spicy, or umami. It's like the clean blank canvas of the food world, a flavor sponge and chameleon that can be a silky non-diary cheese cake or a blackened peppery stir fry or a savory, smoky BBQ.

I also think factory animal farming is completely fucked up on so many different levels even before you consider the cruelty.

Even if you just consider factory farming from a logical and selfish viewpoint of self preservation and environmentalism, what it's doing to the planet is utterly fucked up.

The only logical argument against veganism that I've heard is that it's difficult to raise a kid vegan and still make sure they get enough complex fats and proteins for full early brain development.

And this isn't necessarily an argument I would personally make as an omni. I won't be digging for citations to support this one.

This is coming from my vegan friends who do a fuckton of nutrition homework, who are now raising kids. (Actually, one of the parents I'm talking about is a dula, midwife and licensed nutritionist.)

The kids basically eat a really healthy full spectrum vegan diet, with the addition of being allowed high quality, lowest cruelty possible dairy and fish in limited quantities.

The kids are also allowed and encouraged to choose healthy things for themselves, because it encourages them to learn to listen to their bodies and cravings. Basically those kinds of cravings like when you go grocery shopping when you're sick and find yourself browsing the produce section and being attracted to, say, oranges, broccoli or garlic.

As I understand it - once you become a fully grown adult these nutritional concerns for full spectrum fats for brain development aren't an issue any more.

Oh, I know one other logical argument against veganism. Kind of. Ok, maybe not really: Cats.

Cats are not vegan. They are obligate carnivores. They cannot survive on plant proteins. They can't even metabolize most of them, and they will die a long, slow and horrible death if you try to raise a vegan cat.

If you're a vegan you probably shouldn't have a pet cat if you're uncomfortable with this.

I saw him at Chop Suey in Seattle a few years back. The sound system was on point that night, and I don't give a fuck about stage presence when the music is good. Most of my favorite acts and artists are shy nerds who would rather be hiding behind a wall of speakers and I'm totally ok with that.

My favorite part of the night was watching a mostly empty beer can someone left on the that weird house subwoofer in a box that Chop Suey has that's at the back of the floor oscillate and dance to the bass.

And by dance I mean it would tip partially over on edge on that rim around the bottom of the can and wobble around in circles of varying speeds depending on the frequency of the bass, without ever falling over. When the bass would stop it would fall back upright, then start rolling around on it's edge/corner during when the bass hit.

It apparently had just enough beer in it to resonate with the bass and that bass bin/sub. Damn thing didn't fall over for the entire set, and just keep moving to the bass.

And if your clicked your mouse button to open the electronic article that this reddit post refers to, you wouldn't need to speculate. (Although the casually thrown in implication that the Pyongyang natives eat rats says enough.)

I did, and I'm sorry, I wasn't making some kind of weird racist comment here about poaching, if that's what you're implying. I could have framed that better.

Poaching urban fauna is a thing that happens when there's extreme famine, and very extreme famine was happening in North Korea when this building sat fallow and open for the last ten years before 2008. (One could argue economically that the building itself was one of the wasteful government follies that contributed to that famine.)

Pigeons, rats, squirrels and such are valuable urban small game and food. Any shell of a building - especially one that big - that gave shelter to pigeons or rats would quickly be discovered and exploited by anyone hungry enough to go hunting.

This urban poaching has the side effect of keeping local animal populations down, whether it's rats or ducks or rabbits, whether we consider it cute and fluffy or a gross pest - people will eat it if they're hungry enough.

And this opportunistic food poaching is a thing that happens all over the world, even in places where there isn't apparent or extreme famine involved.

I remember being fascinated by this thing and digging through the early internet trying to find all the pictures and info I could about it.

And I still think that that thing looks like some kind of evil volcano lair murder palace.

The shape is neat for hotel due to the amount of window exposure, but the actual finish and proportions and aesthetics are unsettling as fuck.

Like if you took Brutalist architecture designed by an actual living brutalist to some kind of skeuomorphic alt-modern dystopian pastiche. It just needs a large, authoritative sign on top reading "Ministry of Love".

Also, it's probably built in that three lobed and uncharacteristically wide pyramid shape because that's the only way they could get their materials and building tech to go that high.

Remember, they weren't really building this thing to build a lot of rooms or a fine hotel for visitors. It was more like Dear Leader decided that Best Korea needed the world's tallest or largest building. So they were initially probably trying to build the world's tallest something, but likely settled on world's tallest/largest hotel after realizing they probably couldn't win the general tallest building category.

That structure is probably a death trap of poorly mixed and tested concrete in small batches formed and poured in small slabs over badly tied and low grade rebar. And built by what was essentially underfed slave labor.

And it was sitting there unfinished for something like 20 years before they finally put the curtain windows on it. Corroding and getting rained on and even infested by birds, rodents and whatnot. (Though, it might not be due to the chances of the local population likely eating whatever they can catch.)

I'm basing a lot of this off of the few close up pictures I saw of it back in the day when it was unfinished, and how rough the concrete work was.

The TL;DR is: I would not want to be in that during a fire or large earthquake. Also: Evil Volcano Lair Murder Palace.

Try Salal.org. You get all the convenience of BECU's co-op network CU ATMs with less hassle. They're amazingly chill and their online and mobile banking is good enough that I've basically never had to walk into a branch office unless I needed to do something weird like deposit cash.